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Walid Raad

In our society of CCTV, we don’t notice all the cameras noticing us. The video montage of sunsets in I Only Wish I Could Weep inspires a sensitivity remarkably simple but so warming and profound.

The montage is peiced together by feed from a security camera set to monitor the boardwalk along the coast in Beyrouth. Each day at sunset the unnamed security guard would divert away from surveillance….. panning across the still waves, focusing upon the horizon, and record the sun slowly melt into the water.

Broadening from Beyrouth to middle east politics, streaming down to societal in-security and surveillance, down to the individual minutes which wind down the end of one’s long tedious work day, a silent hommage to the sunset. As the time counter clicks the minutes past, this video is a pure moment of reflection and tranquillity.